This article is all about effective lab activities in any science classroom. As Dr. Fogleman mentioned, most labs, at least those done in the traditional way, offer little more than a use of time. Typical laboratories in schools are not conducted in an effective, critical thinking manor. Instead most current activities follow cookbook instructions and feature low level knowledge where the lab simply verifies something the students already know and focuses on accurate results. The other makes the claim that science instruction (including lab exercises) should mirror science in the real world. Little science in the real world is conducted like that, experiments are ongoing and simply fail to disprove something at the moment, and the unexpected data is also usually the useful, interesting data.
The author not only calls for changes, but gives specific advice on how and why to make these changes, supporting his ideas with a myriad of research. Williams tells that labs should be more open ended, and teacher interruption less. Instead of explaining the steps in the lab one by one and then having the students repeat the procedure and then do percent error calculations, the teacher should pose a simple, brief question. How can these chemicals be classified? How do patterns in nature influence the weather? Or similar types of questions, where before the teacher would have explained the materials and procedure, thus should now be left to the student. Explain the use of possible apparatus, or even of required apparatus, and check the procedure for safety concerns before allowing them to complete it, but leave it up to the student to figure out. This is not only truly inquiry based, but also much more true to life.
This article is all about effective lab activities in any science classroom. As Dr. Fogleman mentioned, most labs, at least those done in the traditional way, offer little more than a use of time. Typical laboratories in schools are not conducted in an effective, critical thinking manor. Instead most current activities follow cookbook instructions and feature low level knowledge where the lab simply verifies something the students already know and focuses on accurate results. The other makes the claim that science instruction (including lab exercises) should mirror science in the real world. Little science in the real world is conducted like that, experiments are ongoing and simply fail to disprove something at the moment, and the unexpected data is also usually the useful, interesting data.
The author not only calls for changes, but gives specific advice on how and why to make these changes, supporting his ideas with a myriad of research. Williams tells that labs should be more open ended, and teacher interruption less. Instead of explaining the steps in the lab one by one and then having the students repeat the procedure and then do percent error calculations, the teacher should pose a simple, brief question. How can these chemicals be classified? How do patterns in nature influence the weather? Or similar types of questions, where before the teacher would have explained the materials and procedure, thus should now be left to the student. Explain the use of possible apparatus, or even of required apparatus, and check the procedure for safety concerns before allowing them to complete it, but leave it up to the student to figure out. This is not only truly inquiry based, but also much more true to life.